Summer Olympics 2012: How and What Acer Tech Powers the Games

Ever wondered who supplies and runs the backbone of the technology at the Summer Olympics 2012 games? Who controls the complex information system for the event and handles things like competition scores? And what tech is required exactly?

The answer, again, comes from Acer. Acer was the official Worldwide Partner of the Winter Olympics 2010 games — and it is powering the Summer Olympics 2012 games as its official tech sponsor, too.

Acer is providing all of the tech functionality, including everything from the overall information system to the competition score calculation. It is also handling games management, broadcast support, information queries, reception and tech-specific tasks. Acer’s running the infrastructure to support the games across numerous venues. These venues include the Technology Operations Center, the Main Media Center, the Olympic Village, the headquarters of the London Organizing Committee, and the competition venues.

All of this takes a lot of equipment (pictured below) and a huge staff including:

13,500 desktops

2,900 notebooks

950 servers and storage systems

13,000 monitors

Tablet PCs

A staff of 350 people on-site

Photo credit: Acer Inc.

Acer also has setup four Internet lounges — three in athletes’ villages and one in the Main Press Center — to provide athletes and press with fully-equipped computing stations with broadband access, printers and social networking apps available 24/7 during the games.

The Acer Group of brands includes Acer, Gateway, Packard Bell and eMachines. It takes a huge amount of coordination to ensure that the games run flawlessly at every level. Will it pull it off again? I’ll be watching. For aNewDomain.net, I’m Sandy Berger.